If you wake up with jaw pain or you’re experiencing new tooth sensitivity, you might be clenching your teeth in your sleep. Clenching your teeth can lead to significant tooth damage over time, especially if it’s coupled with teeth grinding, so it’s crucial to schedule a dental exam as soon as you notice any pain, visible damage to restorations, or other issues.
Clenching Your Jaw at Night
Clenching your jaw at night puts significant pressure on your tooth enamel, particularly if your teeth grind together in your sleep. The most significant long-term issues from bruxism are damage to restorative dental treatment, like crowns and fillings. Over time, nighttime grinding and clenching can wear away the bonds of restorative treatments, which means you may have to go back to the dentist to correct damage.
In patients who have generally healthy teeth, bruxism can also cause tooth erosion and cracked teeth. Your tooth enamel can be worn away by continuous grinding, which can lead to cavities, gum disease, and even stress cracks on teeth that are otherwise healthy. Enamel loss is irreversible and can lead to long-lasting complications. In severe cases, nighttime bruxism can cause malocclusion, or improper tooth alignment, from flattened teeth.
Gum Disease
Clenching your jaw can cause gum disease in severe cases. When you clench your jaw, the force placed on the roots of your teeth may cause your gums to recede. Receding gums can lead to periodontal disease like gingivitis, as well as loose teeth and sometimes tooth loss. If you notice inflamed gums or a gum line that is exposing more of your teeth than usual, nighttime clenching and grinding is likely causing gum health issues.
TMJ and TMD
Your temporomandibular joints are located on both sides of your face and connect your lower jaw to your skull. Many patients who grind or clench their teeth in their sleep will experience a TMJ disorder called TMD, which can cause severe jaw pain, difficulty opening the mouth, a popped or locked jaw, issues chewing food, and tension headaches.
Symptoms of Clenching Your Jaw
Sometimes, the most noticeable symptom of clenching your jaw is pain right when you wake up. For many patients, teeth grinding and jaw clenching are subconscious actions, so you may not even notice that you’re clenching your jaw together, even during the daytime. In many patients, symptoms can include pain in the jaw, face, or neck, tooth pain or sensitivity, a locked jaw, and a headache.
The symptoms of clenching your jaw can also be visual. Some patients may have more pronounced jaw muscles. During a dental exam, your dentist may also discover worn-down tooth enamel, loose or chipped teeth, or teeth that appear flatter than normal. It’s common for the visual symptoms of bruxism to be more obvious on the back molars.
What Causes Teeth Clenching and Grinding?
Although the underlying causes aren’t known, many physicians and dentists believe this condition may be caused by factors related to age, stress, and genetics. Clenching your jaw during the day and at night may be related to other medical conditions like epilepsy, sleep apnea, GERD, and neurological disorders.
How Is It Diagnosed?
Teeth clenching and grinding must be diagnosed by a dentist. During a dental exam, your dentist will check your teeth for visible damage that may be related to grinding your teeth or clenching your jaw. An X-ray of your jaw and teeth can be used to identify damage that might not be visible to the naked eye, such as cracked teeth or worn-down enamel. During your exam, your dentist will also ask about jaw pain, stiffness, and headaches.
What Are Available Treatments?
If teeth grinding or jaw clenching has led to issues with your restorative dental treatments, a dentist will recommend replacing crowns and fillings to prevent the development of new cavities. In some cases, a dentist may perform corrective treatments to address malocclusion to ensure the chewing surfaces of your teeth are properly aligned.
Severe clenching or grinding will need to be managed to prevent ongoing damage to your teeth. The most common way to prevent nighttime clenching is to wear a mouth guard to separate the bottom and top teeth with a cushioned splint. Your dentist may prescribe a custom mouth guard, or you can purchase one over-the-counter.
Ensuring Your Mouth Guard Fits
Whether you have a cushioned guard with a fitted bite surface or a splint more similar to a retainer, the guard must fit in your mouth to prevent dental issues in the future. First, your mouth guard should not touch your gumline, and it should not feel loose. If the guard wiggles around, it does not fit properly and will not prevent damage from grinding.
You can tell if your mouth guard is working by assessing jaw pain and stiffness when you wake up. If one of your main symptoms is tension headaches and you notice that you are having fewer headaches or the headaches are less severe, then your mouth guard is properly fitted and preventing nighttime clenching of the jaw.
Can You Prevent Jaw Clenching in Your Sleep?
Aside from wearing a mouth guard at night, you can adopt certain lifestyle factors to prevent jaw clenching in your sleep. Good sleep hygiene habits, such as limiting smartphone use right before bed or using a white noise machine, may be helpful. Reducing overall stress with routine exercise, yoga, stretching, or meditation before bed may also reduce nighttime clenching and grinding.
For some patients, lifestyle factors like smoking or consuming caffeine in the evening can contribute to clenching the jaw. It may be a good idea to switch to a non-caffeinated herbal tea at night to wind down before bed. If you clench your teeth during the day, you may also consider switching to decaffeinated beverages.
Clenching Your Jaw and Dental Hygiene
In general, a normal dental hygiene routine is adequate to prevent cavities and gum disease when you have moderate clenching of the jaw. Brushing your teeth and flossing twice a day supports strong, healthy teeth, so it’s essential to keep up with this routine to reduce complications. However, if your jaw clenching has caused tooth sensitivity, you may consider switching to dental hygiene products that reduce sensitivity.
If you use a mouth guard as part of your treatment, it’s important to clean the guard each night to ensure the splint doesn’t cause tooth decay. By cleaning your mouth guard each night, the guard will not become a source of bacteria that can cause the development of cavities. Most mouth guards can be cleaned using the same products that clean dentures to eliminate bacteria before inserting the guard at night.
Do You Suffer From Chronic Teeth Grinding or Clenching Your Jaw?
If you suffer from teeth grinding or jaw clenching you owe it to yourself to speak with an experienced dentist as soon as possible. Please feel free to contact us online or call our Martinsburg, West Virginia dental office directly at 304.267.6059 to schedule your appointment. We provide a wide range of general dentistry care as well as more involved dentistry services for patients throughout the Martinsburg area and look forward to you joining the Cornerstone Dental family.
